From Arizona to Japan! Japan and TDR Trip Report Nov 10-24, 2012!

I've never done a trip report before but figured that this would be a great time to start.

There are some great TRs here, and hope to add my own to help future travelers.

I am taking advantage of the holidays off so I'll be going from November 10-24, 2012 (Veteran's Day to Thanksgiving Weekend). I will be flying to Japan on my own on Delta, meeting my friend/ex-bf who travels to Japan every few months. I promise that I'll spare you the arguing with my ex that will inevitably happen, and bring you only the sightseeing part of the trip. Fortunately, he speaks/reads Japanese, and knows his way around the transportation in Japan so he will be a helpful guide.

I will be staying with my friend's friend while there so won't be staying at any of the Disney hotels.

Here is a little bit about me: I'm Anderson (or Andy, though that's my friend's name also). I live in Flagstaff, AZ and work in Education. I love Winnie the Pooh and collect Pooh stuff, so I might be featuring some Pooh stuff. I also collect vinylmation, so some of my trip will be dedicated to that as well. My main park is Disneyland and DCA.

I went to Tokyo once before and visited the Tokyo Disney Resort and LOVED it. Unfortunately, I had a gout attack when I was there, so I am hoping that does not happen again.

Another thing to know about the both of us is that I am mostly a vegetarian (though I stray every once in a while - let's see if I will this trip) and my friend is a vegan, so you'll get to see some non-meat vegan food, which might be a challenge to find.

So enough about us - here are my very tentative plans. However, not every day is filled up so please feel free to give suggestions for any of the cities we are planning to visit. We are getting a rail pass to use for five days or so (the scheduling doesn't allow us to get the full 7 days out of it.) I am finding it a bit difficult to plan since there is so much to do and have no idea what is must see!

mmmm, those look good. i was thinking of the gyoza bun at mysterious island, but don't want to "cheat" if they aren't worth it.

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Sorry for the misunderstanding. The gyouza dog is really famous for it's line but I'm not sure if it's worth it to cheat or not. I thought the Halloween version was yummier but no clue what it had inside! I think the normal gyouza dog has minced pork and probably minced cabbage inside but not sure. I think it's hard to find vegetarian food at TDR but wish you the best of luck. I know some restaurants will have a vegetarian menu if you ask for it so it may be easier to ask at guest relations ahead of time.

If you enjoy Akihabara, you may also enjoy Nakano Broadway - nowhere near as glamorous, but a rabbit warren of anime/manga/etc. shops.

The war museum associated with the Yasukuni shrine is multi-lingual (like many museums in Tokyo) - but it tells the history of the "Great Pacific War" (as well as other Japanese military history) from a very different perspective. Another museum worth visiting IMHO is the Edo-Tokyo Museum.

There are several aquariums in Tokyo, but Tokyo Sea Life Park (near TDR) is probably the best of them. Although I have yet to visit the Sea Paradise park south of Yokohama. I don't think there are any "must sees" in Yokohama itself, but the Ramen Museum makes for an off-beat stop.

If you enjoy Akihabara, you may also enjoy Nakano Broadway - nowhere near as glamorous, but a rabbit warren of anime/manga/etc. shops.

The war museum associated with the Yasukuni shrine is multi-lingual (like many museums in Tokyo) - but it tells the history of the "Great Pacific War" (as well as other Japanese military history) from a very different perspective. Another museum worth visiting IMHO is the Edo-Tokyo Museum.

There are several aquariums in Tokyo, but Tokyo Sea Life Park (near TDR) is probably the best of them. Although I have yet to visit the Sea Paradise park south of Yokohama. I don't think there are any "must sees" in Yokohama itself, but the Ramen Museum makes for an off-beat stop.

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Thank you for the tips. I definitely will do some more research into these!

I definitely might have to check out the ramen museum. I visited gyoza stadium last time, and love the concept of the food theme park. Ramen is one of my favorite foods too. I love noodles!

Well, it's 5 am here in Tokyo, and I just arrived six hours ago to Tokyo Haneda International Airport. Seeing as it's 1 pm where I am from, I am not able to sleep because of Jet Lag. I was able to get in about 2.5 hours of sleep in addition to 1 hour of sleep on the plane. So I figured it was as good a time as any to start my trip report.

Most of the report will not be live, but as of today it is! Also, this might turn out to be a largely dining related report as I'm a piggy.

Woke up bright and early to catch my flight from Phoenix to Los Angeles. Here's the view from the gate. As much as Arizona can be a tough place to live, the weather at this time of year is awesome.

I had a five hour layover in LAX, so after getting my luggage from Southwest and hiking over to Terminal 5 for Delta, I settled in. Fortunately that terminal had an awesome fast casual place called Lemonade - definitely the best airport food I've ever had. Great salads, soups and other options, plus different flavors of lemonade (including rosemary watermelon. YUM!). I got Brussel Sprouts with Parm, Soba Salad, Couscous salad, and avocado/tomato salad, along with mac and cheese.

Finally at 5:30, I departed on the 11 hour Delta flight. While 11 hours is horrible no matter which way you slice it, the flight overall was not as bad as I was expecting. The plane was only half full so I got to move so that I had the window and aisle seats to myself. The in-flight service was also pretty great...lots of movies on demand on the individual screens, so much so that I didn't even use my iPod or Nintendo DS. I watched a total of five movies (Moonrise Kingdom, Brave, Hunger Games, Avengers, and The Dark Knight Rises) and two episodes of 30 Rock.

The food and beverage service was standard, though beer and wine are included complimentary, so I did get to enjoy a beer, even if I'm not a big drinker. Dinner was fairly standard. I didn't order a vegetarian meal, since my friend had booked the flight for me and I thought he order it. So I got the chicken and just didn't eat the chicken or the shrimp. I'm not hardcore vegetarian so this was fine for me. I also brought some salads to go from Lemonade.

In addition to that, they brought out a midflight snack of an ice cream sandwich and a pre-arrival breakfast of egg and cheese croissant, both of which were appreciated.

So after 11 hours, arrived at Tokyo Haneda. Here's my attempt at getting a picture of the sign that says Tokyo International Airport. It was raining as you can see.

I went through immigration and customs. The immigration line took a good 40 minutes and seemed much longer than when I came through Narita. My friend and his friend were waiting outside the gates for me, and they led the way back to his apartment via the trains. Randomly decided to take a picture of this ad:

I love how cute so many things are here: an egg shaped sweet bean filled bun. I also just love the graphic quality of the ads and writing.

Anyway, got back to the apartment and took a nice relaxing shower and bath in their deep tub, which was awesome. Also got to experiment with the buttons on the toilet again

And here's a pic I snapped of the outside view just before I had my 2.5 hour sleep.

So that was my travel day. Later today, I'll be going to the Disney Store and Daiso, and exploring Tokyo (though I'm not sure exactly where yet). Stay Tuned!

The rest of the morning and mid-day, we watched a LA Galaxy soccer game, since they are in the playoffs. My friend is a soccer fan so we had to watch. After that we headed out to Shibuya to see Shibuya crossing

...and to visit the Disney Store

...which was actually a big let down. They had some unique merchandise, but I was expecting them to have a lot lot more. I was also trying to buy a case of vinylmation, and I'm sure they had some sealed cases, but the CMs would not answer us if we could buy a case - though they had 3 cases worth of single boxes out. No vinylmation trading either!

We then headed to Toy Town/Nakano to see if we could find any cool Disney toys. There were lots of these little shops with various vinyl toys and stuffed animals.

I was even able to pick up some poohs and vinylmation. On our way back to the station, we stopped into a Don Quixote, and found the most hilarious underwear!

My former boss said that the highlight of her trip to Japan was riding the bullet trains. While she was a mean, grumpy, crotchedy old lady, I knew I had to ride the shinkansen on this trip, so I bought a 7 Day JR Rail Pass, so we could travel to other parts of the country

So on day three we took the shinkansen to Kyoto. Here comes the train!

Honestly she was right. The bullet trains are incredibly awesome. Super comfortable and quick. Why there is so much push against high speed rail, and improved public transportation in general in the US is beyond me. The transportation systems in Japan, including the trains, subways, and buses are so much better here. Better than driving in my opinion. /rant over

Once we got to the station, we bought a 500 yen day pass for the bus and headed over to Kiyomizu Temple. Here's a pic of me and my friend on the bus. I'm the more excited one!

The streets leading up the slope to the temple were filled with little restaurants and shops and were pretty cool in and of themselves.

The temple is really famous for the "stage" platform.

From which there is a really awesome view.

After that, we headed over to Nijo Castle. I will tell you that I am a terrible sightseer. For the most part, I rush over the descriptions of the history and significance and mostly am there just to look at the cool looking things. So I couldn't really tell you the significance of anything here, as I didn't bother to read or forgot. (Same with the last Temple).

So in that spirit, here are some photos with no captions!

After that, my friend did some record store shopping (he buys records in Japan and flips them on eBay in the US), headed to a vegetarian restaurant, and that was our day in Kyoto. We headed on the Shinkansen to Osaka, staying in the tiniest hotel room I had ever been in up to that point in my life to get rested for our day in Osaka!